Saturday, January 10, 2015

Origin of 'Hoaxed Phoenix Lights Video' Revealed? | VIDEO

The hoaxed video which surfaced in early December of last year (2014) claiming to be “Newly released classified footage of the infamous [Phoenix] lights depicts military craft over the Phoenix basin engaging unknown aircraft” apparently can now be connected to an upcoming movie, The Phoenix Incident (see trailer below).

The bogus video was introduced initially at what appeared to be (at first blush) an authentic news site, i.e., going by the moniker of:

Credit: kwbvnews.com

A cursory look into the site (at that time) revealed that there wasn’t any corporate minutia published there (as is the norm for any formal news organizations); the site was registered by a proxy and was borne in January, last year (2014), although it showed (phony) archives back to 1997. Moreover, it was hosted by the popular blogger host ®WordPress and all the “news items” were penned by one David Collins, with his profile (and associated photo) described as “Investigative journalist David Collins is the leading investigator and writer for KWBV Investigative Reports. David was embedded with coalition forces in the Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn, and has covered human interest stories since 1989.”

Much like the faux web-site, although Collins’ short bio seemed impressive; to date—there isn’t any residue of his (alleged) work that could be found, except at the bogus site, and or its like (also bogus) sister sites or supporting social media sites, along with (a) YouTube account(s). Moreover, some quick research revealed that the the image of Collins is in fact the actor, James Patrick Stuart.

One of the sister sites included www.americancrimes.tv , alleged to be the site for an up and coming (and sometimes stating “current”) crime show which will “profile intriguing crimes, incidents, and unsolved cases from around the world,” and will be hosted by the afore mentioned David Collins. Like the KWBV News 6 site, nothing there could be substantiated.

Other associated sites are www.maricopamissing.com and www.phoenixincident.org; the veneer of these two sites is of an official “missing persons” agency, connected to Maricopa county. The attention is given to four lads, Ryan Stone, Mitch Adams, Glenn Lauder and Jacob Reynolds yet like the other two faux sites, nothing can be verified–quite the opposite in fact; any information about these 4 seems to originate from the afore mentioned sites. Moreover, the date they are alleged to have gone missing was/is on March 14th, 1997, the day after the mass UFO sighting over Arizona, AKA, the Phoenix Lights . . . and here’s where the dots start to connect . . . more on that in a minute.

As the hoaxed video, along with entire house of house of cards that was built around it began to fall apart, as reported here and over at OpenMinds, whoever was manipulating the sites circled the wagons. Large portions of the faux news site, as well as the American Crimes site became password protected. The hoaxed Phoenix Lights Video, was replaced with another hoaxed version, which, when attempted to view, stated “Footage has been removed in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 793.” Simultaneously, the embedding feature was terminated.

As time went on, the video reappeared with the former seemingly, official declaration removed. Additionally, since Collins, or more accurately—the image claimed to be of him, was exposed as the actor James P. Stuart, an addendum was added the American Crimes site, stating that Stuart was merely playing Collins as the host of the American Crimes show. Even though the entire debacle had been exposed at this point, the powers-that-be were still trying to keep up the charade.

At this juncture, given the all the work and time that was put into this fabrication—the only thing that made any sense was an intended viral marketing campaign as noted by our colleague Alejandro Rojas (at OpenMinds).

This brings us to yesterdays’ tidbit, by Jen Yamato; she, being a columnist for deadline.com broke the news about the soon to be released, The Phoenix Incident, a “UFO conspiracy thriller” which “has been flying under the radar even as viral seeds have been germinating across the web like sleeper cells of marketing data.”

She further states: “The feature debut of veteran gaming director Keith Arem (Call of Duty, Titanfall) was shot quietly last year and inked select foreign distribution deals during November’s AFM. It screens next week for buyers here in LA, accompanied by a transmedia viral campaign that Arem hopes will highlight a new kind of digital storytelling. ’The idea is that you will be on your phone leaving the theater, Googling the information to see if it’s real,’ Arem told me.”

So the bogus video; bogus journalist and associated bogus sites are what Yamato describes as “viral seeds.”

The final kicker was the description of the storyline:

“The phenomenon hit close to home for Arizona native Arem, who wrote and directed the sci-fi thriller about four unsolved Missing Persons cases connected to the Phoenix phenomenon using whistleblower testimony, recovered military footage, and eyewitness accounts to explore the U.S. military’s alleged engagement of alien spacecrafts that night.”

So at the end of the day, the afore mentioned fiasco has now been verified as “viral seeds” for the upcoming film, The Phoenix Incident. For Arem’s sake (and his pocket book) I hope the film fares better then this boondoggle of a marketing campaign. I might add, aside from this blunder in general, creating what many viewers would believe to be real missing person web-sites was done in poor taste and callousness to put it mildly.

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